3.34 Why making halfassed decisions is making your PhD harder

We don’t usually think of a PhD as a decision making process but it really is. We decide what research we do, how we do it, how we report it, and we make hundreds of decisions a day about what order we will do work in, what opportunities we will take up and refuse, and who we should ask for support. In this episode, I share the problems that happen we only vaguely, half-heartedly make decisions – and as usual, let you know what we need to do instead. 

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and today I'm gonna talk about a problem you might not even know you have. You might think that you are good at making decisions. Others of you will think you are bad at making decisions, but only when it comes to like the big important things.

I'm here to tell you that making half-assed decisions, like kind of, oh, I sort of wanna do this, I think type decisions is holding you back in so many areas of your life. I'm gonna share with you why that is and what we get to do about it and why everything's gonna be so much easier when you do this.

Now if you're listening to this live, so this is coming out on the 28th of April, 2025. If you're listening to this live, then I have another reason why making full decisions that you believe in and that you stand by is gonna be really important, and that is because the PhD Life Coach membership is open for new members between the 28th of April and the 2nd of May i E. It's open now. And in this episode I'm gonna talk about why I want you to make a full and proper decision that you are either in or you are not. And I'll explain why as we go through. 

So first of all, I'm gonna tell you a story to illustrate what I'm saying here. As I record this, it's been the Easter holidays in a runup to a launch for me, and that meant that I had to make some decisions in advance about when I was working and when I wasn't. Now those of you who follow me on Instagram will have seen, I did a reel about this, but essentially one of the things that I really encourage people to do is to make definite, intentional decisions about when they're gonna work and when they're not gonna work.

A halfassed decision in this context would be, I'll do some work over the weekend if I feel like it, or I might need to work this weekend, we'll see how it goes, and those sorts of statements might sound really kind of responsive and compassionate and flexible and fluid and all these attractive things, right?

But in reality, we know that what most of us will do is we'll say that to ourselves. We'll spend the weekend going, oh, I should work, but I can't really be bothered. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll do it tomorrow. I'll just do this now. And then we end up not enjoying the time we got off and not doing the bits of work that we intend. And so what I really encourage people to do is make an intentional decision. That's an actual decision, not a kind of vague halfassed decision about "do I actually need and or want, want to work this weekend?" And if so, specifically on what? Specifically, what do I want to work on? Specifically why? Specifically when? And plan that out, and what happened? I did that, right, in advance of the holidays. I knew I had my stepdaughter here. I knew there was gonna be this temptation to decide not to work after all. And then I would feel afterwards. I'd feel annoyed with myself, or I know there'd be a temptation to kind of work more than I intended, and then I'd regret not spending more time with my family. So I made an intentional decision about what I was gonna do, and I did it and it was amazing. I had a gorgeous weekend. I did the things I needed to do. I had tons of fun. It was lovely. 

Now, this isn't all a, aren't I amazing? You should be like me thing, because I had exactly the same situation with something else over Easter. And I only realized when I was planning this podcast that I did not make intentional decisions. I made half-assed decisions, and that was around Easter eggs and chocolate and all of that good stuff that comes along with Easter celebrations. And I realized that I had made a halfass decision.

My husband and I are both on a mission to not be more middle aged than we need to be and to have bodies that are functioning well as we're getting older and all of that stuff. And so we've been trying to be mindful of what we're eating, right? And so we'd made a sort of vague, I am gonna say vague decision that we were gonna try and plan our meals more, we were gonna try and snack less, that was fine. But what we didn't do was make a definitive decision about what that meant over Easter. And so when there's then a half-assed decision, a decision that's like, oh, we should probably eat a bit more healthily. That's a half-assed decision. We then argued with it over Easter.

We decided, oh, but it's Easter. We can have this. Oh, but my stepdaughter's with us, we can have it after all. Oh, we're out for the day and we haven't planned anything, so let's get a hot dog. We argued with that decision because it was a halfassed decision. It was a sort of decision. It was a maybe decision.

And it meant that we finished the Easter weekend going, Hmm. It was a lovely weekend, but we didn't actually need to eat all the things that we ate in order to make it a lovely weekend. It was a lovely weekend anyway, and so we're kind of frustrated that we didn't stick to what we said, but this is one of those occasions where I'm not blaming implementer me.

This was not that I had a definitive decision and I chose to go against it. I left myself with a floppy decision. This was a strategic problem. This was a boss me problem. I did not make a definitive decision about what my eating plans were over Easter. 

Now, how does this translate into PhDs? You may think you don't have that many decisions to make, but you have a gazillion decisions to make. You have to decide what to read, what studies you're gonna do, exactly how you're gonna do them, what methods you're gonna use, how you're gonna analyze them. Whether this data point is an outlier or not an outlier, whether you are gonna write it like this or write that, work on this first or work on that first. Say yes to your supervisor. Say no to your supervisor. Billions of decisions. And lots of them you are probably making in a kind of half-ass way. Oh, on Tuesday I'm gonna try and work on my writing. Half-ass decision. On Thursday, I'll do some reading and see where I get to halfassed decision. Okay? What we need to do is we need to be much more definitive about our decision making.

If you decide that Tuesday morning you are working for two hours, I want you to make that a definitive decision because when we make it a definitive decision, it does two things. One, it makes it way harder to argue with. Now, some of you will be thinking, I still argue with it. That's okay. We'll talk about that in a second, but when it's a definitive, I am absolutely doing this in that slot. When it's a definitive decision, it's harder to argue with. Secondly, when we make a definitive decision and we're actually definitely gonna do this thing, then we spend a little bit of time thinking, okay, what does that look like? So if we're like, I am definitely gonna do some writing in that time slot, then we might spend some time hopefully thinking, right, exactly what am I writing?

How can I make that easier for myself? How can I make sure I've got my supervisor's comments by them? How can I make sure I've got the resources I need by them? How can I make sure I've got a bullet pointed list of what I need to cover? If it's a definitive decision, that's definitely gonna happen, we're way more likely to set ourselves up for success with it.

You know, relating it back to the eating thing, if I'd made a definitive decision that I was going to continue in my quest to eat like somebody who's going to age well, I may have made decisions to take a healthier snack into town with me so that I didn't end up buying a hot dog or to make more mindful decisions about what's snacks I bought into the house, for example. 

You support yourself when you know it's something you're definitely going to do, that you've made a definite decision about. You support yourself. 

The other thing that you do when you make a definitive decision, or I'm gonna encourage you to do if you don't do already, is you then have your back about it. Now, if you haven't listened to my episode about how to make effective decisions, I think it's called How to Make Decisions that You Love, that's what it's called. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I want to go and check it out. But a key component of that decision making is that once you've made the decision, you make it a decision you love.

So instead of being like, oh, I wish I was reading today, instead of writing, you say, I am so glad that I'm getting this writing done. In fact, I had a gorgeous message from one of my members who's actually leaving the membership this quarter for the best possible reason. She's leaving because she has pretty much finished her thesis. She's really confident with getting ready for the Viva, and she knows she can do her changes, so she's leaving for like the best reasons ever. One of the things she said, she sent me a lovely email to thank me for my support, and one of the things that she said in that email was that she really spends a lot of time reminding herself how glad she is.

She's getting this written. She made a decision. There was a point at which she wasn't sure that she was gonna finish. She made a decision she was going to, and one of the things we talked about was having your back in that decision. If you decide you're going to do it, we reinforce that that was the right decision all the time.

so that we don't spend time going, oh, I did decide this, but I wish maybe that, no, I made this decision and it was the best decision. It was made for good reasons, and this is why we're doing it. Now, this also fits into when you are reading and writing. So often my clients say to me, I don't know how to structure this. I don't know what I need to be reading. And they frame it as a don't know question, as a lack of knowledge question when in reality, most of the time it's a lack of decision making. It's not that you don't know how to structure it, it's that you haven't decided how to structure it. And if you can figure out that this is a decision, that you get to pick how you structure it, then suddenly you can support yourself to do that. It's like, okay, I need to make a definitive decision about how to structure this, and how would I do that? Well, I might look at the different options I've got. I might experiment with the different options. I might compare them. I might choose what my priorities are for this piece of work. See how that informs the decision that I make. Okay. When we frame it as a decision, we then think about what that process needs to be in order to make that decision. 

And remember, with all decisions, there's a time limit on it too. So you might decide, I'm gonna decide on the structure of this chapter from now until the point I send it to my supervisor for feedback. If after that, they give me different feedback, or if after that I decide that I think it could be structured another way. Great, no problem. But I'm gonna do my best to make this work between now and then so we can time limit these things as well.

That way when you are writing, you are not kind of going, oh, I sort of thought I'd structure it this way, but now I'm not sure it works. So I might change it around and do it that way. And then wonder why you get to the end of the week and you haven't got anything done. 

By being more definitive in our decision making processes and in then making the decision, it enables us to take action so much easier. Otherwise you become like, have you seen those Instagram videos where they put the dog in the middle and then the dad runs one way and the mom runs the other way and then the dog, it is like to see who the dog prefers. Right? But often the dog just sits in the middle going. And doesn't go anywhere at all. That's what we do when we don't make decisions.

We're sitting in the middle going, oh, maybe that way, maybe that way. I dunno. And we don't move. Whereas when we make a decision, we can run in one direction and then if that gives us our best possibility of actually making a choice and actually getting somewhere. 

Now, how does this all relate to the membership? You might think that I'm gonna use this time to tell you all the reasons why you should join the membership. And to be fair, there are many, many reasons that you should join the membership and I want you all to go to my website, PhD life coach.com, and click on the membership, have a look at what we offer.

I'm not here to tell you that you should join. I'm here to tell you that you should make a decision, a definitive decision for the next quarter, because that's how long it is until you can get in again. I want you to either definitively decide that you are joining the membership, in which case, go do it now.

Like as you hear this, we're only open till Friday. I don't want you to miss it. Jump straight in and join. Or I want you to definitively decide that you are not joining this quarter and that you are gonna make that work. So not just definitively deciding that you're not, definitively deciding that you are gonna not join, and you're gonna have a really good quarter where you support yourself without the support of the PhD Life Coach membership.

Okay, what this means is it makes it much less likely that you'll kind of dither, not make a decision, and then next week be like, oh, I kind of wish I had, that would've been really good, dah, dah. We don't want that. Equally, I don't want you to kind of join, but kind of be like, but I don't really have time and it probably won't work, and da da, and then not come to anything. I wonder why it didn't have any effect. Okay? I want you to decide, and if you decide, I want you to make the most of it, that doesn't mean come to everything. You don't have to come to everything to make the most of it. You need to come to key things at moments you need it and get the support that you need to make a difference.

I want you to decide that doing this is gonna be the best decision ever. And if you decide not to, I want you to decide that that was the best decision ever. I'm so glad I chose not to do the membership this quarter. I'm so glad I decided to figure this stuff out myself. Make it the right decision. I. I think that's the harder decision, right? I think it's harder to figure this stuff out on your own, but make it the right decision. 

I've had to make this decision recently, so until now I did my original post-training, all that stuff, and obviously I've got tons of experience in academia, but I'd never had any business coaching at all.

And it wasn't something that I felt like I needed, but more recently, as the membership's growing, my business is growing, I thought that actually it would be really useful. And if I was gonna do it, it was this one coach. She just got me. I follow everything she does on social media. She's brilliant, love her, and she offers quite an expensive business coaching mastermind thing, uh, like I can't even tell you how many times more expensive than the membership, like super expensive and. I really thought it could be useful, but I was also really like, oh my God, that's so much money. And what if I don't make most of it, and what if I don't earn that money back and dah, dah, dah?

And so I had a little thing and then I thought, you know what? Listen to yourself, Vikki. Do the things that you tell your clients to do. Let's make a definitive decision. And so I looked at it and I thought about what would be my reasons for joining? And I thought about what would be my reasons to not join?

And I thought about which decision would I prefer to regret, which I think is a lovely question to always ask yourself. And I asked myself, if I went all in on my decision, what would that look like? And I thought, you know what? If I go all in and I buy into this mastermind and I go all in on it, and I decide to make it the best decision ever, this could absolutely transform my business.

This could change my experience of running this business. It could expand the membership, help me reach more PhD students. It could be absolutely amazing. And I decided, you know what? I would prefer to go all in, try and make this the best experience ever. And if it doesn't end up exactly what I thought it would be, I am willing to regret spending the money and putting that in because I don't think it'll happen. And I'd rather regret doing something than regret not doing something. And so I decided to jump in and not gonna lie so far been amazing, loving it.

I want you to have a think, what decisions do you need to make at the moment, especially tiny decisions about how you're gonna frame an argument, what you are gonna do today, how you're gonna analyze your data, all of those things, and think how much different would it be if I made a definitive decision for a explicit period of time and went all in on that decision.

Trust me, avoiding half assed decisions, making definitive decisions is the way to make spectacular progress, move you forward faster, get you more information, and from there if you need to pivot, then you pivot. But you pivot with loads more information, loads more progress, loads more experience. It's all about making definitive decisions. 

I really hope you found this useful. If you haven't checked out the membership already, make sure you go to my website and have a look. It is gonna be focusing on procrastination and focus, getting stuff done, prioritization, task management, all that good stuff that all of us need, it's gonna be super exciting.

It runs three months. Make sure you check it out. Make a decision that you love. Thank you everyone for listening, and I see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com.

You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.